Create a Zen-style design

Chie and Inko explain how to use brushes and texture techniques to create an authentic Zen painting.

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In Zen-style painting, artists depict their ideas with minimal materials and simple brush strokes. But while in the West a brush is often considered little more than a tool for self-expression, in the East, there is a belief that each has a unique characteristic of its own. For true versatility, several styles are needed.

Oriental brushes can add many special characteristics to your work, such as atmospheric wet blur. In this project, we show you how to achieve these effects and enhance your designs through some advanced techniques for creating your own, customised Japanese-style Photoshop brushes.

We also reveal how to lend a traditional Oriental feeling to your designs through some handmade-texture effects. Traditional oriental paper usually has a rough and uneven surface, with decayed background colours, multi-coloured fragments such as gold and silver confetti-like materials, and visible fibres.

Once mastered, these techniques, which are all achieved in Photoshop, can be adapted for any design to which you'd like to add a Japanese flavour.